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Convicted terrorists should be treated like paedophiles and have their children taken away from them, one of the country's most senior police officers has suggested.

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, who is Britain's leading counter-terror officer, said exposing children to extremist propaganda was "equally wicked" to keeping them in environments where there was sexual abuse.

In a speech to the Policy Exchange think tank on Monday evening, he said: “I wonder if we need more parity between protecting children from paedophile and terrorist parents.”

Expanding on the idea, Mr Rowley said: "If you know parents are interested in sex with children, or if you know parents believe that people of their faith or their belief, should hate everybody else and grow up to kill people, for me those things are equally wicked environments to expose children to."

Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley has warned of the threat posed by the extreme Far RightCredit:
Reuters

In November last year a mother of five was convicted of posting a terrorist propaganda on social media.

But the judge in the case spared her a jail sentence so that she could return to care for her children.

Mr Rowley said social services had a lot of experience of removing children from parents convicted of sharing paedophile images.

But he said perhaps it was time to consider doing the same in cases where people were found guilty of spreading terrorist propaganda.

He said: "Whilst the family courts have really rolled their sleeves up, I am not yet sure, we have yet got our heads round how to deal with, if you have got parents who are effectively terrorists, convicted of sharing terrorist propaganda.

I wonder if we need more parity between protecting children from paedophile and terrorist parentsAssistant Commissioner Mark Rowley

"Does that in of itself pose such a risk to the children so that the children should be treated the same as those whose parents are paedophiles?"

Mr Rowley also warned of the "alarming occurrence" of known extremists removing their children from school and teaching them at home.

He explained that in a recent survey, police discovered that around half of all people convicted of terrorist offences in London had been found to be home schooling their children.

Mr Rowley, who is retiring from his role after 31-years in the police service, also warned of the growing threat posed by the extreme Right Wing in Britain.

Far Right terrorist Darren Osborne carried out the attack on Muslim worshippers in Finsbury Park

Delivering the Colin Cramphorn Memorial Lecture, he revealed that the police and security services had foiled four neo-Nazi terror plots in the the UK in 2017, as well as 10 Islamist conspiracies.

Mr Rowley condemned extremists on both sides, saying they shared the same divisive goals of creating intolerance, isolation and mistrust.

He accused the controversial pressure group, CAGE, of whipping up "ridiculous claims that all Muslims are terror suspects in the eyes of the authorities" and said Far-Right extremists had set up "whites only" food banks in some cities.

Ironically, while Islamist and extreme Right Wing ideologies may appear to be at opposing ends of the argument, it is evident that they both have a great deal in commonAssistant Commissioner Mark Rowley

Mr Rowley said: "So ironically, while Islamist and extreme Right Wing ideologies may appear to be at opposing ends of the argument, it is evident that they both have a great deal in common."

"Each side feeds into each other's extremist rhetoric with the common goal of increasing tensions and divisions in communities," he explained.

Mr Rowley said tackling extremism was the key to fighting terrorism, but it required a "whole society response" involving schools, councils and social media giants as well as the police.

“Extremists have the same ambition to create hatred, intolerance and isolation. We need to focus as much on extremism as terrorism, not just the police but the whole of society. Police and the security services are only a small part of that fight."

He called on the tech giants to do more to tackle terrorist material online, explaining: “The ability of extremists to ply their trade through the internet is a matter of great concern to all of us.”

Mr Rowley also suggested that political correctness had sometimes allowed extremism to flourish, saying: “We have at times been too tolerant of intolerance.”